Seasons. Maurizio Cattelan interprets the mountain, the history, the fall.

An urban journey between art and symbol

Cattelan stages a powerful reflection on the cyclicity of life, values that transform, history and its contradictions. His works occupy public spaces laden with memory: the Palazzo della Ragione hosts November (2024), a tribute to the theme of marginality; GAMeC welcomes Empire (2025) and No (2021), while in the Ex Oratorio di San Lupo, Bones (2025) is displayed, a symbol of undone power. The journey concludes with the site-specific installation One (2025), located at the Rotonda dei Mille.

Art as a crisis of collective identity

Every artwork is an interrogation. Bones, a majestic eagle in statuary marble by Michelangelo, lies on the ground: a gesture that overturns centuries of imperial iconography. Empire encloses a brick in a glass bottle, a metaphor for a revolution never completed. No cancels out the face of a young Hitler, eluding any attempt at recognition and condemnation. In November, a homeless man being urinated on breaks the silence of institutions and social conventions. One, finally, grafts a childish gesture – a child making a gun with their fingers – onto the statue of Garibaldi, opening up to a critical reading of national history.

Public Art and Urban Memory

Seasons is not an experiment in public art that engages the city, its history, and its topography with the urgencies of the present. Each placement is carefully chosen, each artistic gesture digs beneath the surface of representation. Cattelan does not offer answers, but instills doubts, inviting us to think of the mountain as a space of passage, transformation, loss, and rebirth.

Between site-specific and urban communication

The project is completed by a visual campaign that also involves Jean Nouvel's Kilometro Rosso: a site-specific communication action that extends the project's reach, bringing art to places of work and innovation.

With Seasons, Cattelan redefines the boundaries of contemporary art as a critical space capable of questioning power, history, and the individual. An exhibition that is traversed, inhabited, and challenged.